In Area C, Faster Demolitions Clear the Way for Jewish Expansion
Tuesday, February 24, 2026 at 10:52PM With most of the West Bank closed to Palestinian development, residents build without permits – while demolitions, settler violence and land policy shifts expand Jewish construction
by Amira Hass 23 February 2026 Haaretz
Marsal Khattab, whose home was demolished by Israeli authorities in Area C. He ties the demolition order to the expansion of the nearby settlement of Har Bracha. Credit: Nidal Eshtayeh
On the morning of January 8, three Israeli bulldozers rolled into Nablus, flanked by five Border Police jeeps and a white vehicle marked as belonging to the Civil Administration. They entered the al-Taawon neighborhood in the city's south. Officers accompanying the convoy fired tear gas grenades at journalists and residents to keep them away.
From several hundred meters away, Mirsal Hattab watched two bulldozers smash into the roof of his home, crushing it and collapsing the walls. At the same time, a third bulldozer pounded the al-Abbad family home until it, too, came down.
The scenes repeated last Tuesday, when Israeli bulldozers demolished the al-Saber family home in the same neighborhood. At least eight other houses there have already received stop-work and demolition orders for the same reason: they are located in Area C and were built without permits from Israeli authorities. This is despite the neighborhood bordering regulated parts of Nablus and being far from any settlement or settler road.
Al-Taawon is only one example of the accelerating pace of demolitions across the West Bank. In January alone, the Civil Administration demolished 24 structures due to lack of building permits in Area C. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 2,461 Palestinian structures were demolished over the past two years for this reason, compared to 4,984 during the preceding nine years combined. As a result, roughly 2500 people lost their homes during those two years.
An outpost in Ras al-Ain al-Auja in the West Bank, January. Palestinian municipalities are not permitted to expand their master plans. Credit: Tomer Appelbaum
The surge in administrative demolitions is intertwined with two major processes unfolding in the West Bank in recent years. First, the displacement of some 80 Palestinian communities due to ever increasing organized violence generated by new and old settler outposts and farms. Second, sweeping changes introduced by the government to land arrangements in the territory.
These changes include canceling the prohibition on individual Jews purchasing land in the West Bank; lifting confidentiality from the land registry and reducing Civil Administration oversight of transactions; renewing land settlement and registration by ownership; and accelerating declarations of Palestinian public land – or land with unclear ownership – as state land. Together, these measures ensure the steady production of more land "clean" of Palestinians.
The artificial territorial division created by the Oslo Accords returned planning and construction authority to Palestinians in only 39 percent of the West Bank – Areas A and B. It was meant to end in 1999. From that point onward, Palestinian Authority powers were supposed to extend to most of the West Bank, excluding the built-up areas of existing settlements (as Palestinian negotiators interpreted it) and IDF army camps.
Instead, Israel unilaterally froze the "transfer of powers." The area the Palestinian Authority can develop for its population has remained fixed as scattered enclaves. Any new Palestinian structure, electricity pole, or water pipe in the 61 percent of the West Bank designated as Area C requires a permit from the Civil Administration – a permit that is almost never granted.
Between 2009 and 2020, for example, the Civil Administration issued only 66 building permits to Palestinians, according to its response to the nonprofit Bimkom. During the same period, 22,000 housing-unit permits were issued to Jewish citizens, according to data from Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics. The imbalance discourages Palestinians and their municipalities from even attempting to go the formal way. Those who might prefer to secure permits know they face a long bureaucratic process that will almost certainly end in rejection.
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The result is stagnation. Cities and villages cannot expand their master plans to include public or private lands that would meet economic needs or accommodate natural population growth. They cannot chose freely the most suitable place for new schools, hospitals or playground.
Structural changes in land policy, combined with the wave of demolitions, would make it easier for the state and private individuals to seize additional land. These measures join methods already proven effective: violence and expulsion; declaration of military firing zones; expropriation for security purposes; designation of nature reserves; denial of access to certain areas; creation of security zones around settlements; and more.
Following the recent decision to accelerate declarations of state land, Israel is expected to rely increasingly on its twisted interpretation of Ottoman law, which allows it to classify uncultivated plots as state land designated for Jews. This, even when the land went uncultivated because its Palestinian owners were denied access.
A house torched by settlers near the village of Burin, this month. For years, settler groups have called for stronger "enforcement and governance" and the demolition of Palestinian structures in Area C. Credit: Nasser Nasser / AP
Economic distress may also push Palestinians to sell land to Jews. That distress stems directly from government decisions: the halt of Palestinian work inside Israel and the confiscation of nearly 70 percent of the Palestinian Authority's revenues from customs and taxes. Even if only a few dozen people sell small plots, each sale will facilitate the expansion of Israeli takeover.
For years, settler organizations – led by the right-wing NGO Regavim – have demanded the introduction of today's government's land-policy changes, alongside heightened "enforcement and governance" in Area C. A recent document from Regavim claims that increased enforcement has already reduced Palestinian construction without permits.
The organization frames such construction as part of a Palestinian master plan to systematically seize territory – despite the land being Palestinian to begin with under international law. What is portrayed as a malicious strategy is often simply a lack of choice.
Mirsal Hattab, about 65, is one such case. All his adult life, he lived with his family in a rented apartment in Nablus. His savings, from years as a dental technician and later as a flower shop owner, were not enough to buy homes for himself and his sons. In the early 2010s, he purchased a, on the southwestern outskirts of an area known as "New Nablus.", from a resident of the village Iraq Burin which is situated on a high ridge at the southern side of a broad valley.
As Area C remained off-limits for Palestinian development, land prices soared in city centers – mostly classified as Area A – and in villages whose lands are split between Areas B and C. Many families, including theHattabs, chose to take a gamble and build in Area C. They hoped the Civil Administration would not bother to reach places far from settlements or settler roads, and only minutes by car from recognized neighborhoods.
"We built our home little by little," Hattab says, standing beside the rubble. "An apartment for my wife and me. One for my eldest son and our grandchildren. And another in preparation for his brother, who got engaged." They moved in just two years ago.
Residents of Qaffin, north of Tulkarm, made a similar calculation. At the junction of two inter-village roads, on roughly five dunams (1.2 acres), they built a gas station, a concrete factory and a kiosk. The station had been relocated there in 2018 from within the village; the kiosk was erected by a young man after the outbreak of the war that began on October 7. Earlier this month, soldiers posted stop-work orders at the site due to lack of permits.
Marsal Khattab near the ruins of his home in Qaffin, this week. He was forced to leave behind the 14 cats he had been feeding. Credit: Nidal Eshtayeh
"Where will we go, and how will we make a living?" the kiosk owner asks. "I lost my job at a restaurant in Israel when the war broke out. Other family members who worked in Israel are now unemployed. Our agricultural lands are beyond the separation barrier, and we're not allowed to access or cultivate them. The land here is ours. Who are we bothering with our kiosk?"
The owners are now weighing whether to enter a bureaucratic and legal battle by filing objections to the stop-work orders – knowing demolition orders will likely follow.
The Hattab family did so, and lost. Neither the Civil Administration's Higher Planning Council nor Jerusalem District Court Judge Avraham Rubin addressed what they see as the core absurdity: that the Nablus Municipality has been barred for 30 years from expanding the area under its planning authority.
The Hattabs were granted a month to empty their home. "We rented a small apartment, and there's no room for everything we took from the new house. Many things are still in boxes," Hattab says, less than a month after the demolition. Sinks, a shattered water tank, and wooden planks remain scattered across the site. He also left behind the 14 cats he used to feed. As he climbs the mound of broken concrete that was once his home, several of them rub against his leg. For the first time, his voice breaks as he recalls the day of the demolition.
He struggles to understand why the Israeli authorities did not stop construction when it began in 2014. "Why did they wait until we invested all our savings in the construction? Why did they wait until 2021, when we received the first stop-work order?"
He answered his own question, speculating that the order was issued when multi-story buildings began rising in the settlement of Har Bracha, also in Area C. The settlement sits on the southern ridge of Mount Gerizim, about two kilometers as the crow flies from his demolished home, separated by a broad valley that further widens the physical distance.
As his own reply suggests, Civil Administration – subordinate to Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a founder of Regavim – is willing to send bulldozers deep into Palestinian urban areas to advance the broader plan of Smotrich: the relentless expansion of Jewish communities. Palestinians, meanwhile, are left to crowd into six densely packed enclaves that together cover roughly 18 percent of the West Bank.
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